A Modern Icon of the Virgin Mary
A Painting Depicts A Wish to See Our Lady Return to a Cornish Shrine
Jul 27, 2009
A modern icon of the Virgin Mary by an English artist is the result of one of a series of coincidences reported by a group of people who are seeking to restore the ancient shrine of Ladye Park in Liskeard, Cornwall.
The icon, Return to Ladye Park by David Whittley, is full of imagery about the shrine, its pre-Christian origins and the Virgin Mary. It was completed at the request of a devotee of the shrine, referred to only as "Sister 13" by Claire Riche in her book, The Lost Shrine of Liskeard.
Symbols of Mary and the Rosary
At the center of the painting is the Virgin clothed in her traditional colors: red with a blue mantle. Red is used in many icons, such as the Cross of San Damiano, to represent intense love, according to Franciscan Fr. Michael Scanlon.
Red also represents nobility as well as suffering and passion, according to Rev. Johann Roten, of the International Marian Research Institute, University of Dayton, who adds that that blue also is a color of nobility, "the color of an empress."
David Whittley says he painted Mary delicately holding a white rose to symbolize the Catholic rosary, each prayer on the rosary being "like the offering of a rose," according to Claire Riche's writings.
The Virgin stands in front of a chapel, representing the medieval shrine whose structure is still part of a local farmhouse. On top of the chapel is a Celtic cross of the type that can be seen throughout the Cornish countryside.
To the right is a tree with flowers in bloom, symbols, David Whittley says, "of the union of body and spirit, with the fruits of knowledge and the blossoms of eternal life." Above the tree hovers a dove of peace, significant since the theme of the shrine the devotees wish to re-establish is "unity."
At the top is a cross on three white roses representing the Trinity. To the left is the Christian symbol of a fish and to the right a deer, for the deer that grazed in the forest nearby.
On the left of the chapel are lilies and a bee, symbols of Kerrid, a Druidic goddess of love and eternal youth who was believed to gain knowledge and inspiration from a higher spiritual being.
Our Lady in the Park
As Christianity had spread, the Cornish had replaced reliance on Kerrid with devotion to the Virgin Mary, who gains her power of love from her closeness with God.
At the Reformation, the shrine fell into disuse but in the mid-1950s, Cornish scholar Peggy Pollard believed she received a message from the Virgin to re-establish it. In 1998, Sister 13, on one of many visits to Liskeard to carry on Peggy Pollard's work of returning Mary “back to Liskeard,” saw a new mural on a wall in the town depicting it's history. The centerpiece was a massive figure of Cornish mythic character Caradon, but Sister 13's eyes were drawn to the left-hand corner where she saw a woman holding a rose at the doorway of a Cornish roundhouse which had a cross on top and lettering around the door: "Our Lady in the Park.”
Return to Ladye Park
The mural was by David Whittley who was not a Christian at the time. All he had known about the shrine was a brief reference in a book on Liskeard's history. He had intended to paint a chapel without any figure, but he told Claire Riche that the figure of Mary for the mural formed in his mind so powerfully he felt compelled to paint it.
His experience was similar to Peggy Pollard’s, who had painted her own picture of Mary.
Sister 13 asked David to paint Mary for her. The painting he delivered he had entitled “Return to Ladye Park.”
Sources:
The Lost Shrine of Liskeard, by Claire Riche, published by The Saint Austin Press.
Rev. Johann Roten, S.M, director of the Marian Library-International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton.
Fr. Michael Scanlon, Franciscan Friars T.O.R., Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Province, USA
Two paintings illustrating this article, La Vierge a la Porcelaine and Return to Ladye Park, are reproduced by kind permission of Claire Riche.
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